lost coal fire minerals

Wayne Downey ( downeyite ) has informed me that his entire stash of minerals, from the burning coal beds in PA, was disbursed illegally from a storage facility. There were two 50 gallon drums packed with specimens and it is uncertain if the reciever through them out or knows what he has and will be selling. Please contact me by email if any volume of these specimens show up for sale.

Uwe Kolitsch Wrote:-------------------------------------------------------> "from the burning coal beds in PA"> > From several localities (which ones?) or only from> one?

It must be Centralia PA (http://tinyurl.com/ydedqe3) which is the only underground mine fire in PA that I know of. I recall seeing crusty, smelly deposits when the fires were near the surface (they move around in the maze of underground anthracite mines). Also piles of drill cores (they were forever drilling holes, trying to find the fire, and succeeded in only feeding oxygen to the underground fires). Well worth a visit if you are anywhere in the region.

This sounds like minerals from the coal mine fire in Shenandoah, PA (my birthplace) that got out of control in the 1960s. This is around the same time that the fire in Centralia started. There were also other sites that had the same issues. When I was a teenager we used to sit next to the steam vents (not smart) to keep warm in the winter. We were doing the usually teenager stuff, like drinking cheap beer and wine and smoking cheap cigars and found the rock waste piles a convenient and private place to hang out.

Shenadoah is the birthplace of the Dorsey brothers and MRS T's pierogis. The town has really gone down hill in the last 50 years, yet I still go back to visit my parents graves and to buy some of the best Polska Kielbasa in the world at a local butcher shop. .

There are still some scattered smoking vents, but the main area where the minerals were formed is the site of a Little League ballpark.

Most likely Forrestville I would assume, the original site of his downeyite find, however the material would likely be similar in appearance to specimens from most of these many coal-fire sites. The ones pictured above are from Keeley's run and Centrailia, and there is also Burnside which was heavily collected at, but I have only micros from there in my collection (no matrix).

The minerals were reference samples collected over a period of 40 years from mine fires all over the east coast of the US.Including, Shenandoah, Burnside, Forrestville, Glen Lyon, Shamokin, Wanimee, Laural Run, Williamstown, Centrailia, Ashley, PA and some samples from Philippi,WV and a few samples from eastern Montana and Wyoming near the Acme mine fire. They included type mineral specimens of 13 new species that had not been named yet. No Downeyite was in this storage facility since it requires permanent storage in a vacuum desiccator to exist. Most of the samples were in plastic air tight containers and labeled on the lid. Almost all contained delicate crystals on fragile matrix and rough handling would destroy them. Several samples were slated to go to the Smithsonian collection including a type sample of beta-germanium disulfide which was the first terrestrial example of a new crystal system dubbed VLS. I had first discovered this material at Shenandoah, PA. in 1968 but didn't identify it as a new species until 1973 when it was analyzed and photographed at the USGS in Washington ,DC using an SEMQ.I don't hold much hope at this time for recovery. But if you come across some of this material please contact me, most of these fires have been extinguished and no longer produce the mineral sublimates. This makes them rare and at least to me, historically priceless. By the way, most of the samples are truly amazing under a binocular microscope. wfdowney2@yahoo.com

As a lad I often went to the burning fields at Williamstown before they were extinguished. I have some specimens of sulfur bloom and other minerals stashed away in my collection if you should ever need a sample for scientific purposes.Just FYI.G

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